This poem undoubtedly sheds many rays of light upon the feelings, at the time, of its writer. While he was a profound believer in the spiritual nature and needs of man, he was evidently not opposed to the contemporary methods of biblical criticism as applied to the prophecies of the Old Testament, for has he not himself worked in accord with the light such criticism had thrown upon the origin of prophecy? Furthermore, the poem is not only an instance of his belief in the supremacy of the human spirit, but it distinctly repudiates the Comtian ideal of a religion of humanity, and of an immortality existing only in the memory of others. The Comte philosophy growing out of a material conception of the universe and a product of scientific thought has been one of the strong influences through the whole of the nineteenth century in sociology and religion. While it has worked much good in developing a deeper interest in the social life of man, it has proved altogether unsatisfactory and barren as a religious ideal, though there are minds which seem to derive some sort of forlorn comfort from this religion of positivism--from such hopes as may be inspired by the worship of Humanity "as a continuity and solidarity in time" without "any special existence, more largely composed of the dead than of the living," by the thought of an immortality in which we shall be reunited with the remembrance of our "grandsires" like Tyltyl and Mytyl in Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird." Here, as always, the poet throws in his weight on the side of the paramount worth of the individual, and of a conception of life which demands that the individual shall have a future world in which to overcome the flaws and imperfections incident to earthly life. Although, as I have tried to show, this poem undoubtedly bears witness to Browning's awareness to the thought currents of the day, it is couched in a form so dramatic, and in a language so poetic, that it seems like a spontaneous outburst of belief in which feeling alone had played a part. Certainly, whatever thoughts upon the subject may have been stowed away in the subconscious regions of the poet's mind, they well up here in a fountain of pure inspiration, carrying the thought forward on the wings of the poet's own spirit. Poems reflecting several phases of the turmoil of religious opinion rife in mid-century England are "Christmas Eve" and "Easter Day." Baffling they are, even misleading to any one who is desirous of finding out the exact attitude of the poet's mind, for example, upon the rival doctrines of a Methodist parson and a German biblical critic. The Methodist Chapel and the German University might be considered as representative of the extremes of thought in the more or less prescribed realm of theology, which largely through the influence of the filtering in of scientific and philosophic thought had divided itself into many sects.